micron p60
Gus,
I agree that POV isn't a perfect benchmarking tool. However, I think that
while 3DS's critical areas have probably been hand optimized for the 486, that
when it is ported to other CPUs there will probably be little or no hand
optimization. The likelihood of cpu specific hand optimization goes down with
each new cpu they support. I think this will be a trend in software. Before,
applications ran on just one platform, or maybe just PC and Mac. The critical
loops could be hand optimized for x86 or 68K. But now, they will be running on
PC, Mac, PPC, Alpha, MIPS, etc. and nobody will have time to optimize them.
Another reason they won't be hand optimized is that it is so difficult to write
optimized assembly for the new RISC chips. The old rules don't apply anymore,
and there are so many new rules with every new chip that only a compiler can
keep track of them.
The same sort of thing is even true of a 486. Just a few days ago, I found
out, to my horror, that, on a 486,
dec cx
jnz @@looptop
is almost twice as fast as
loop @@looptop
Yes, when I was in school three years ago, all they talked mostly hype. The one
thing you forgot to mention was "layers". In school they kept saying, "layers
are good." In industry, I've found that layers are bad because they make
things slow.
Bailey